Lead AI programmer says the single player experience has key lessons for the Halo developer to take away

Bungie's Lead AI Programmer, Damian Isla, has said the developer has a lot to learn from Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4.

Speaking about Call of Duty 4's rivalry with Halo 3 as the most-played game on Xbox Live, Isla told GamesIndustry.biz that he's a fan of the game and believes Bungie has a lot to learn about scripted single player experiences from it.

"We have a lot to learn from their success too, they did some very innovative things to keep people going and their experience-rewards system was something that we paid a lot of attention to," he explained.

"I think it's a great game and single player obviously is fantastic... they did a hell of a job with their set pieces, of scripting certain moments that they were really sure the player was going to actually see and experience first hand. The way that they use those moments to craft the player experience...Halo has a lot to learn from."

"While we certainly have many scenes throughout the Halo series that are scripted in-game moments, a lot of time players don't experience it, or they don't see the thing going on, or they maybe don't experience it in quite the same way that we expected them to," he added.

Isla further explained that he felt it was Halo's "simulation" approach to the game's design that made creating scripted moments difficult for the developer.

"I think Halo has always been an extremely simulation driven game...simulation, I think, adds replayability - it adds depth to the game - but it also makes scripting much more difficult and it means designers have a much harder time," he commented.